Step by step
- Search your watch history by title. On youtube.com open History, or go to My Activity, then YouTube History, and use the search box. It matches video titles and channels.
- Export the full list if you need more. In Google Takeout select only "YouTube and YouTube Music", open the format options, set History to JSON or HTML, and download. You get every watched video with title, channel and time.
- Save the videos you want to search by content. Add the videos that matter to a tool that keeps transcripts. In BrainTube, save a video from the Chrome extension or paste the link; connect YouTube to bring in playlists and Liked videos.
- Bulk-add from a playlist. Put the videos you want into a playlist and import it. BrainTube imports up to 10 videos at a time on Free, 50 on Starter and 150 on Pro.
- Search by what was said. Ask a question in plain words. Search matches meaning and keywords across every transcript, and answers in BrainTube's chat link to the timestamp the quote came from.
What each option can find
- YouTube history search: titles and channels of videos watched while signed in with history on. Not what was said.
- Google Takeout export: the complete list with timestamps, which you can open in a browser or a spreadsheet. Still titles only.
- A transcript library (BrainTube, Recall, Readwise Reader, NotebookLM): the words spoken in each video you saved, searchable by meaning. Only covers videos you add.
Why the transcript matters
Months after watching, you remember an idea or a phrase, rarely the title. A title search can’t find “the interview where someone explained usage-based pricing”. A transcript search can, and in BrainTube’s chat the answer links to the timestamp it came from.
Turn the export into a library worth searching
Your watch history already maps what you learn from better than any tag system you would design. Use it as an audit, not an import list:
- Sort the Takeout file by channel. Most real learning comes from a small set of channels. Follow or import those, not the whole history.
- Group by question, not topic. “Productivity” is too broad to retrieve from. “How do solo founders price their first product?” is a tag that pays off every time a matching video comes in.
- Highlight sparingly. Three lines from a 40-minute video, each with its timestamp, are a citation you can reuse anywhere.
- Ask weekly, prune monthly. Put one real working question to the library each week; once a month remove videos you never highlighted, searched or shared.
What BrainTube can and can't do here
BrainTube keeps the transcript of every YouTube video you save, follows channels you choose so new uploads come in on their own, and imports your playlists and Liked videos when you connect YouTube. Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other MCP clients can search the same library.
It does not read your watch history or Watch Later list: YouTube doesn’t give apps access to either. Move the videos you care about into a playlist first, then import it.
Related: search every video and podcast you save, how to remember what you watch and read and bulk-import a YouTube playlist into a knowledge base.